


Second Chances

by deepandlovelydark



Series: Domestic Adventures [30]
Category: MacGyver (TV 1985)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Angst, Assassins & Hitmen, Gun Violence, Minnesota, Poverty, Small Towns, Whump, what price a soul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-12 07:19:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12954174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: ....so say you're pushing forty, failing at running a coffee shop, and never made it out of your Minnesota hometown.If an internationally infamous assassin shows up and starts dropping hints about taking you away from all this, do you listen?





	1. April 1990

**Author's Note:**

> AU of the usual Becky AU; someone's been playing fast and loose with the timeline. 
> 
> As a warning, this isn't going to be like my usual fare: there'll be some profanity, internalised homophobia and Scenes of a Mature Nature.

_Triple-shot expresso, with a dash of butter._

Nikki Carpenter always times her visit for when the shop's empty, in the early-morning lapse between dedicated fishermen and the white-collar office workers who can afford to sleep later. They used to just nod at each other; now they chat, in the few minutes she allots him out of her busy schedule.

She's always considerate, and he fancies her a little but she's way out of his league- a successful career woman, in the executive branch at a big-name nonprofit downtown. Whereas he's a nobody just trying to make the best of his mother's coffee shop, and not too well at that. 

"The butter thing's catching on," Mac tells her. "I had two people asking me for it yesterday."

"Try it yourself sometime. It adds a whole new dimension to the flavour."

"Uh-huh. Maybe I'd try it, except I don't actually drink coffee."

Nikki smiles with wry amusement. "And you work here? Ironic, isn't it?"

All this time and she still thinks he's just an employee? Ouch. 

But there's no point correcting her- it'd be a shame to put her off her stride this early in the morning, and no doubt Nikki's got something important happening next. Helping people. Something that actually matters. 

"Sure. Sure.”

*******************

_Root beer- and don't forget, three sugars!_

"Mon amie," Jack Dalton says, smirking as he finishes the terrifying concotion. "I've done it."

"You've said that before." The taxi-driver's enthusiasm inevitably outstrips reality: the only question is by how much. Though life wouldn't be the same without his perversely humorous outlook, and dedication to cheap money-for-nothing schemes (Mac can understand the appeal, rather too well).

"No, but this time I really have. Traded in the car, all my cash and just about all my worldly goods for that Tri-Pacer I was drooling over last month- Mac, I'm finally going home."

"Jack, that's amazing! Well done."

"Shaking off the dust of this crummy town once and for all. Back to Texas, baby! Just think of it! Sunshine, great steaks, all the cheap Mexican tequilla I can drink."

"How soon?" Oh lord, Jack's been talking about this for years: epic plans to get hold of a pilot's license and a plane, by any means necessary. Literally for years, so why's it throwing him so badly now it's happened?

_Because I never thought you'd actually go ahead and do it..._

"Delivery in two weeks, once they finish plastering duck tape over the holes. Don't worry, I'll be around for a few more of your Western video nights." 

"That's good, I was gonna put on a Leone next. There isn't any room for a mechanic, is there?" 

"I'm sorry, Mac," Jack says, sounding atypically embarassed. "No, there isn't. It'll have to be footloose and fancy-free...the next one though, I promise."

"Huh. You sure there's going to be a next one? Not gonna crash it like you did that one in the flying club?"

"That was insured." He waves a hand, dismissively. "This one's got my whole future riding on her. I'll gentle her along like a baby."

"Try better than that. Remember that time you dropped Becky, and I had to catch her?" 

Jack frowns. "You gonna keep bringing that up until doomsday? Sheesh, tonight of all nights I thought you'd be happy for me."

Well, he will be. But not yet. Not until this wave of jealousy calms down enough for him to see straight. 

He turns away, starts putting away the clean cups. "C'mon. Course I am."

"Mac, there's more to being a good liar than not having an eye-twitch."

*******************

_Medium skim-milk latte, two hundred and twenty degrees and one ice cube, with a shot each of hazelnut syrup and chocolate syrup and peppermint syrup- oh, no, that's not right. Let me see, a medium skim-milk latte..._

Lunch rush doesn't: a whole hour goes by with only three customers. Bad for business- he's never exactly been raking it in, but it seems to have been getting worse these last few years, or maybe that's just his general ineptitude starting to show. Good for reading, though: time enough to work through a couple of back issues of "Popular Mechanics". Thank god for the library's subscription. And that nice lady with the copper-framed glasses, who lets him smuggle them home. 

Two o'clock is his usual time for lunch. Tuna fish, wheat bread. Nothing spectacular, but at least it's cheap and fast. (He'd tried going vegetarian for a few years, until a niece had shown up on his doorstep. After that...well, once he'd taken out a fishing license to supplement the straitened grocery budget, it'd seemed silly to make the effort.)

Just as he's finishing up, Penny Parker comes in, cheerful and tripping over her own two feet as usual. She's an interesting conundrum. Her drink orders drive him up the wall (never even the same two days running!), but she's so sweet about how she announces them. Plus she has a trust fund big enough to make her the best tipper in town, which doesn't hurt.

"You're so clever, running a coffee shop like you do,"- this, as he stirs in the fourth syrup shot. "I'd never be able to do all that stuff."

"Hey, you've got lines to remember, don't you? Same deal." 

"Well...sometimes. When I don't forget them."

The one person he hopes won't ever get out of Mission City; she's always talking about going to Los Angeles to try her luck as an actress, but he's seen her in community theatre and she's...well, terrible isn't the word. Just about competent enough for the local crowd (who are sympathetic, and know full well there'd be no play at all without her financing behind it). But no way is she Hollywood-worthy material, not in a million years.  

If she doesn't know, she'll break her heart one day. If she does know... 

"There we go. All good?"

 "Oooh," Penny says, sipping and making a face. She puts the drink down. "You left out the peppermint syrup, and this is just awful without it."

"Did I? I'm sorry." There goes his tip. Dammit.  

"It's okay," she says, leaning over the counter to grab the syrup bottle. He cringes for the inevitable spill. 

But it doesn't happen. Somehow, against all probability, Penny's managed to retrieve, use, and put back a glass bottle without smashing anything. 

"See? It's perfect now!"

"Huh, and they say the age of miracles is past. Want anything to go with that?"

"Sounds wonderful. Which one of the desserts is your favourite?" 

"Oh...uh, the brownie, probably. Chocolate with chocolate chips, I get them from the bakery across the road." This is a new one on him. She's never wanted food before.  

"Perfect! In a bag, please?" 

"Sure, no problem."

She pays up without a murmur (same tip as usual, he notices). Takes out a pink pen and scrawls "For Mac" across the brown paper.  

"Here, enjoy it. It's such a nice day out, I wanted to get into the spirit of the thing."

It's one of those drab, dead-grey days when everything looks dead, even the stuff that wasn't alive to begin with. Hers must be a fun kind of insanity. 

"Hey, thanks," Mac mumbles around a mouthful. 

"Glad to make your day nicer. And don't forget, my next rehearsal’s Saturday!"

On her way out, she collides with a lamp and breaks it. Now, that's more like the day he was expecting. 

*******************

_Lapsang Souchong. And if you let a drop of milk come anywhere near it, I'll shatter you like a dropped ice lolly._

Smells like a forest fire, tastes even better. Mac usually makes himself a surreptitious cup from the used leaves afterwards, and even that's still pretty strong. 

He tries hard to be friendly with everybody, even the rudest customers, but Murdoc doesn't make it easy. Not so much that he's rude, or inconsiderate, or argumentative.

More...insidious, than that.

There's a lot of odd stories about him in town. That he's a freelance photographer, blacklisted for taking incriminating photos of someone too powerful to cross. That he's a heftily titled English aristocrat, bribed by his family to do anything or go anywhere as long as he stays out of the country. That he's an international assassin who's picked this spot for his vacations, because none of his enemies would dream of looking for him here. Murdoc always smiles at the rumours, and never denies a one. 

"Unusually terse today, are we? I hope that means you're having second thoughts. All that anger should find its target, it'd be such a waste of natural talent otherwise..”

"Okay, then," Mac says from the floor (he’d better be handy enough to fix this lamp, the shop can’t really do without it). "Who did you have in mind for me to kill this time?" A sort of game, that Murdoc had started and he'd responded to from boredom-sharpened curiosity. He sure hopes it's a game.

"Oh...let's vary the parameters a little. Try coming after me, perhaps? After all, no doubt I've have been a cruel and unusual man. You could go ahead and kill me without guilt."

"Even then, I'd still have to say no. I mean, I dunno what you're like the rest of the time. Maybe you're secretly one of the good guys or something."

"You do make this so exasperating," Murdoc says, downing the hot liquid with no sign of concern. "You wouldn't succeed, of course, I'd run rings around you- but I'd accept a reasonable attempt. Just think of the perks. International travel, an inexhaustible expense account, and all for the low, low price of your immortal soul." He has a viciously refined smile. “Think about it."

"Want any sugar in your refill?" That's done it. He switches the lamp on: a little wobbly, but still shining.  

"For heaven's sake, I thought I'd made my preferences very clear!"

"And so did I, I thought."

Maybe he oughta ban the guy from coming in. 

Nah. He can't bring himself to hate the only other tea drinker in Mission City. 

*******************

_Hot milk, with a sprinkling of nutmeg and chocolate sprinkles._

"Hiya, Unc," Becky says. "Got time for a cuddle?" 

"Always," he says, hugging her. "What's up today, more volunteer work? Friday night partying?"

"I wish," Becky says soberly, as she lets go. "No, gonna go upstairs and hit the books. I've been slacking off a bit since I got that Western Tech scholarship."

"Don't worry about it. You deserve some time to relax and enjoy yourself."

"I know, but I've had a whole two weeks of that now, and I don't want to get out of the habit. Besides, it's really all your fault." 

She's grinning, but the comment stings more than it should. "Who, me?"

"Sure. Bribing me with candy and no chores just for studying? It worked. These days, I can't even go out for a pizza without thinking about geometry, the Renaissance and organic chem.” 

Parents and brother dead, moving halfway across the country, having to live in this- well, dump, to be blunt about it. Yet she's grown into this cheerful, curious scholar, more likely to laugh than cry. If there's anything he's proud of in his life, it's her.  

"I'm gonna miss you so much this autumn," he says quietly. "My brave little Becky." 

"I know it won't be the same- but we'll have letters, and phone calls, and maybe I can come back for holidays. And in a few years, when I've graduated and found a good job- somewhere nice for us, I promise. You'll never have to put up with another cold Minnesota winter."  

He lets the silence stretch out a little bit. She drinks her milk down, in a few quick gulps. 

"I sure hope so," Mac says, softly. 

*******************

 _Irish coffee, heavy on the whisky._  

"You know what I like," Ellen says, dry and fragile as ever. 

His ex-wife never shows up without a litany of regrets in waiting, lingering in the air even when they stay unspoken. If only, if only. If they'd waited a few years instead of convincing themselves that a high school romance was the stuff of marriage, if there'd been a child. If her stint working as a local news anchor hadn't failed so pitifully, if he hadn't bankrupted them with that stupid patent fiasco...if only they'd tried harder, in short. 

Mac's never been sure if he feels more guilty or relieved that they didn't.  

"Comin' right up." Terse again. The less he says in these exchanges, the better. 

She watches as he prepares it, drumming her fingers on the counter in a mock impatience that is no end annoying (which is, of course, why she does it). There's another bruise on her neck today- expertly disguised with makeup, but then the makeup's the obvious tell. Someone really needs to convince her to get out of her second marriage, before the abuse gets any worse ( _I know I wasn't the best husband, but you left me for that?_ ) 

Though he can hardly tell her. It’d take a friend to say it, and Ellen doesn't have friends. A Rolodex of useful contacts isn't the same thing. 

"I don't get why you keep coming in here, after all this time."  

She shrugs indifferently. "You still make the best damn cup of coffee in town, Mac."

"Y'know, I wonder sometimes if it wasn't the swearing that broke my patience. Especially once I noticed you got me in the habit.”

"What? I was talking about the coffee, you dope, not you."

"Ellen, you're missing the point- no. We're not rehashing these same old arguments again, we're just not." (He really wouldn't put up with this, if she wasn't so punctilious about her tipping.)

"And as it happens, tonight I did have something in mind. My congratulations on your niece's college acceptance."

"Uh, thanks? She's busy studying right now."

"Don't worry, I don't want to see her any more than she does. But we're still family of sorts, so I've talked to my dressmaker about arranging a fitting for her. If only so the poor girl can go to college with a few decent outfits." 

"You mean, tailored and everything? I- look, I just can't afford that kind of thing."

 "Of course you can't," Ellen says, thoroughly enjoying herself now. "Don't worry about it, my husband never pays any attention to the petty cash. And believe me, by his standards this is petty."

If he called Becky down now and explained the whole story, she'd probably throw the coffee in Ellen's face. He spends a moment enjoying the picture. 

And then Mac bites his tongue and thanks her, because after all, it's his Becky involved. She's worth a few sacrifices. 

Even getting gypped on the price of a cup of coffee, he notices afterwards. 

******************* 

Ten to nine. He's looking forward to closing up; this has been a hell of a day. 

But of course, of course there'd have to be one last customer...

"MacGyver, is it?"

He actually has to take a second to think about that. It's been ages since anyone called him by his full last name, the way he prefers it. (At least nobody calls him Angus these days. That was a small victory.) 

"Uh huh. What'd you want to order?"

"How about just a cup of coffee? Plenty of milk, plenty of sugar- don't tell my doctor." The man laughs, with a pleasant ease that suggests a well-used sense of humour. A little of Mac’s irritation dissolves. Good vibrations, maybe. 

"That I can do." Actually, it's a blessing in disguise; that last cup won't have to go down the sink after all. "Want anything else with it?"

 "I wouldn't mind a bit of conversation. My name's Pete Thornton. But you might as well call me Pete, everybody else does." He holds out his hand.

This is weird. Most customers don't ever notice there's a person behind the counter, even most of the regulars. 

Weird, but nice: Mac shakes hands with a smile. "So, who mentioned my name? Only I'm kinda curious now."

 "Nikki Carpenter- do you know her? She says she comes here every morning."

 "Oh, Nikki! Yeah, yeah she does. You're one of her colleagues? Phoenix Foundation?"

"I certainly am! Came by to ask you...well, a favour. There's another regular of yours, I think? Name of Murdoc?"

"Not exactly a regular. He comes and goes a lot."

"That sounds like our man...all right, I'm going to tell you the whole truth now, see what you think, and I'll understand if you don't feel up to participating. Among the Foundation’s other activities, we help out with international security operations. That man is a very dangerous criminal. We'd like your help setting up a sting operation for the next time he comes in." 

Oh god. 

Oh, _god._

So Murdoc really could deliver on all those promises? High-falutin' jet-setter lifestyle, money to burn, never a dull moment, everything he's ever wanted. Still wants now, so very badly. How many times has he laughingly turned the assassin down? Six? Seven?

There's a tightness in his throat now; he hopes it won't show. "Sounds kinda dangerous, huh?"

"Oh, we wouldn't arrest him in here. You'd have a panic button-"

"Standard police model, or something more sophisticated? I always wanted to know what the frequencies were." 

Pete stares at him. "That's not the sort of question I expected from a Minnesotan barista." 

"I try to keep up, best I can. Um- is there a reward, or something?"

"Well, of course we'd see to it that you'd be compensated for your time and effort..."

That's not good enough. That's the government-think tank-whatever-it-is disappearing back into the shadows afterwards, leaving him stranded. No. No no no. 

_Dammit, MacGyver, think! You're never gonna get another chance like this!_

 "I've got a better idea. You're after HIT, aren't you? Homicide International Trust?" 

"Murdoc told you about that?" 

"Told me a lot of stuff. Even invited me to join them, I was thinking about it- I bet you'd like the whole gang, wouldn't you? Not just one assassin who might not spill under pressure? Say I take him up on the offer and get all their intel." He can't keep the pleading out of his voice any more. "Double or nothing. In six months you'll either have the lot of them or I'll be dead." 

"You'd be dead," Pete says automatically. 

"Hey, I'm willing to take that chance. And if a trained assassin thinks I'm worth his time, I must have something, right?"

It's a bluff. He has a damned good idea what kind of partner Murdoc's really looking for, and it isn't one to match him in marksmanship. 

But Pete's looking at him with a thoughtful expression. Maybe he's buying it.  

"It's not protocol, of course, but...you really think you can pull this off? Untrained? Nothing to go by except your own wits?"

"Sure I can. The kind of life I've led, my wits are about all I’ve had.”

"If this goes wrong, the board is going to wring my neck," Pete mutters to himself. "But Nikki's been keeping an eye on you, and it takes a lot to impress her...what about that niece of yours? Suppose something happens to you, what about her?”

"She'll be in a freshman in college in the fall, and besides...Becky would understand."

Pete toys with his empty cup. "Double or nothing, you said? Two options. First is that you forget this conversation ever happened, we leave, and you keep on being a coffee shop owner with some funny side hobbies. No hard feelings.“

"Not that."

"Second one, from now on you're under our daily surveillance. One of these days Murdoc will be back, and so will we- and if you two somehow manage to get out of the ensuring crossfire alive, there will be a dead drop in readiness for any info you might pick up. Deliver us names and addresses for HIT's top men, and we'll call that your trial by fire. Even let you come on board as an official Phoenix agent...it'll be merry hell with the paperwork, of course, but I'll fix it up for you if you get that far. You're really that keen to burn your bridges, are you?”

Pretty perceptive guy. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. Do I get the impression I'll be just as much a target as he is?"

"Oh yes," Pete says calmly. "Think about it this way. If you get killed in the first five minutes of an attack you were forewarned about, you were the wrong man for the job anyway."

In a whole lifetime's worth of bad luck and bad decisions, this has to be the worst one he's ever made. 

MacGyver smiles. He ought to be dazed and confused, by the speed of events: instead he's just calm. Confident even, in a way he hasn't been in years. 

"Can't wait to get started." 


	2. October 1987

Blood does not bounce on the ice, as promised. It merely splatters. 

Exactly as he was expecting, then. By this point in his career, Murdoc rather fancies that he has an understanding with blood. Its ways, its habits, its scent...

By his side, Penny Parker is squeaking away. "...oh, I'm sorry you had to see that! Usually they're so careful, and- oh, no, here comes Mac. And he's so sweet usually."

"I'll be perfectly honest, I can't tell any of them apart in those ridiculous helmets." Just a simple lie to keep his hand in, and the sentence had even started off truthful. But this blonde-haired arrival's caught his eye for some reason.

He has no interest whatsoever in the byzantine rules of the local sport (his dear leading lady's attempts to explain have certainly left him none the wiser), but this much is clear enough: there are twelve players on the ice, eleven of whom are keen to play a good game and beat their rivals. 

The twelfth just wants to murder everybody. 

Perhaps he doesn't know hockey, but Murdoc's taught himself to read body language, however grotesque the circumstances- and the new player comes in with a hot violence that utterly overshadows his luckless, hapless fellows, showing them off for the sheep they are. In, out, indifferent to his teammates and slashing his way through the crowd, with a style purified in sheer brutality. Cunning brutality, too- one favourite play with his bat (or whatever it is they call it), just doing nothing, flicking lazily about, until precisely the right moment comes to slam the target home- oh, characteristic as a fingerprint! A viciously perfect little sweep that dominates the field of play, as it so thoroughly deserves.

This bloodlust was never meant to grace a provincial backwater. Like Mozart trapped in Peoria, Beethoven doomed to a Cardiff sitting-room.  

"He has this coffee shop not far from the theatre, I love it," Penny says. "Like I said, he's nice the rest of the time - but I don't know if he really ought to play hockey so much. I mean, you can see he's not even very good at it."

"I wouldn't know," Murdoc murmurs, as the umpire flags up blondie for a penalty. Of course. They wouldn't appreciate real artistry in a place this shallow.

And blondie nods, and goes- but not before one last slam, a harsh sweep of bat against ice, ringing all the way to hell with its clarion anger. 

Unholy catharsis. Of course he would have done the same. Of course he would have. 

Well-honed assassin's instincts awake. Time to leave. Now. Forget his vacation of self-indulgent stage performance, forget this backwater town, find an airport and forget this entire continent exists, if necessary. If there is one sin forbidden in his profession, it's empathy. 

But like many a better man, Murdoc finds himself the hopeless prey of temptation. 

"Coffee shop, you said? I really must go there sometime."

****************

"Tea. Not whatever dreadful bagged stuff you Americans drink." 

"Not much call for anything besides that," MacGyver says. Away from the ice he seems relaxed enough, in an easy-going way calculated to put customers off their guard. Perhaps it even succeeds; how many other people in this town would recognise the symptoms of that momentarily-slaked anger? Sleek and self-possessed now, as a feasted panther...but it never stays satisfied for long.

"Hang on, though." He pulls out a tea caddy from under the counter, rather dingier than the display canisters. "Christmas present from my niece. Earl Grey all right?"

"I suppose it must suffice. How much?"

MacGyver hums to himself, as he sets about the brewing. "You know, you're the first person in about six years to even ask? Tell you what, you can have it on the house."

"What a terrible businessman you must be," Murdoc says, slapping a tenner on the counter. "Keep the change. No doubt you can use it."

"Hmm. You think so?" MacGyver says, ringing up the receipt. "But suppose I'd told you that I charged ten dollars for one cup of tea? You'd have laughed in my face and gone somewhere else."

"I have already tried half a dozen shops in the area...oh, you bastard," Murdoc hisses. It's been years since anyone's caught him out in a dodge. And a childish one like that to boot, the man's driving him to distraction. (Besides, he craves another glimpse at that glorious frustrated anger.)

But MacGyver's voice stays calm. "It really is my tea caddy, though. If you're gonna be sticking around, I'd better lay in a supply."

"Two months. I'm playing the Phantom in dear Miss Parker's production...acting is a hobby of mine, you see. It took some little trouble to find a production where I could overplay it as I liked."

"Huh. Well, you sure found the right theatre for it. Good news for me..."

"Oh?"

"Aside from the business," MacGyver says, not making eye contact (is it shyness or complete indifference? He'll find out and change it, one way or another). "I've never had anyone come in and cuss me out in their first five minutes. D'you know how refreshing that is, after forty years of Minnesota nice?"

Ah ha. 

There's the viciousness. 


	3. November 1987

Dinner's going to be pretty simple, just a bit of veg with yesterday's slow-cooked lentils. Becky shakes her head and starts frying some venison sausage to go with it. Mac's always ravenous when he's been on the ice, and tonight he's way later than usual.

She ought to like Murdoc, she knows that; the fee’s he's paying her uncle for private skating lessons is ridiculously generous (and the unexpected windfall is coming out to more spending money than she’s ever had in her life). Everyone in the theatre group loves the courteous, dashing Englishman. Penny can’t stop bubbling over about her co-star, half the girls in choir lay claim to giggling crushes. Plus, he's far and away the best actor Mission City’s ever seen; even she has to admit that his Phantom’s fun to watch.

But Jack can’t stand the guy, and his eye for a phony is pretty sharp. Being one himself.

_And I don’t like him either. I just wish I could explain why…_

Someone’s coming up the stairs, two at a time. Nice familiar step.

“How’s my girl?” Mac asks.

“All right," she says, hugging him. "Been worrying where you’d got to. I warmed up dinner.”

“Oh, you can have it all to yourself, I ate already. Murdoc and I went for dinner at the Gray Goose afterwards.”

“Really? Isn’t the place kind of upscale?” _And expensive._

“Definitely. I had this baked stuffed lobster- gonna have to take you there for a graduation present or something, you’ll love it. And I brought you my tiramisu for dessert,” Mac says, smiling as he unpacks the bag. “But Murdoc’s got some ridiculous expense account to pay for it, cos technically we were having a business chat. He was talking about arranging some nonprofit tax write-offs, for renovating the community theatre- now, wouldn’t that be nice? If your choir group didn’t have to sing somewhere plaster falls off the ceiling every time they hit a high note.”

“He could have discussed that with Penny, couldn’t he? Since she’s in charge of the trust and all that.” She dishes up a plate for herself and sits down at the table. Mac keeps pacing across the floor as he talks, the way he does when he’s excited.

“You know nobody ever talks business with Penny, if they can help it. I hope he can pull it off. There might even be a stipend for building maintenance, if I’m lucky- course I’d keep on doing it for you guys anyway, but getting paid sure wouldn’t hurt.”

Huh, so Murdoc’s a philanthropist on top of everything else. She really hasn’t got a reason in the world to mistrust him.

“By the way, how are the hockey lessons going?”

Mac doesn’t quite fall over laughing, but it’s a couple minutes before he gets his breath back. “He’s terrible! Becky, you’ve never seen anybody so bad on the ice. He can just about skate if it's at a snail’s pace, but the minute he tries to make any speed it’s a disaster.”

“Worse than me?”

“Way worse than you. He fell down five times today. Five! I was practically nursemaiding him across the ice, by the end of it.”

Something about this doesn’t sound right. Murdoc's the energetic type, always running amuk at the theatre; the guy seems awfully athletic to be so bad with a set of ice-skates.

On the tip of her tongue to point this out, but she stops herself. The one undeniable fact, the one that keeps holding her back from saying anything, is that Murdoc’s so…well, good for her uncle. Always pushing him out of his usual low-key torpor, into lively enthusiasm (like the cheerful storyteller from her earliest memories, who told her tales of bright knights and clever princesses and said nothing was ever impossible). Whatever’s going on with the two of them, it does seem to be what Mac wants.

A thought forms, one she’s been deliberately putting out of her head: _what if what he wants, isn’t good for him?_

Maybe she ought to have more self-confidence and call him on this. Now, before something goes wrong.

But his life’s hard enough already, and she just doesn’t have the heart.

***************

An airplane, clear skies, and someone to ride them with him. 

Jack Dalton’s been dreaming about the first for as long as he can remember. The second he hadn’t even thought about wanting, until a pack of oh-so-helpful authorities had bundled his indignant ten-year self off to the frozen North. 

The third one had just sort of snuck up on him. 

“I could have left after high school,” Jack tells the fridge, not out of any particular desire to enlighten his appliance but because he’s simply unable to stop talking at this point (three bottles is his usual limit on work nights, he’s already on the fourth). “I could have gone home, I could have been driving taxis in Dallas and been halfway there at least, but no. Had to stick around, had to watch him dump his future down the drain with Ellen, had to be there while it all went wrong and he was blowing his life to hell. And when that was over and we're about to get out, all that stuff about his niece has to happen and he’s all ‘oh no, Jack, I have to make a commitment now’. Commitment! What the hell else have I been doing for twenty years?”

There isn’t any more beer: there is, however, a half-bottle of red wine stolen from Penny’s party last week. It’ll do. 

“I coulda left this crummy town years ago!” he shouts out the window. Not as if the neighbours can be more annoyed with him (he was gonna have to move soon anyway, after the escapade with that marine and the handcuffs last week). “Instead of sticking around for a two-timing handyman!”

He chugs down some of the wine, which tastes even worse now. What the hell is in this stuff, glitter? Typical Penny. The neighbours must all think he’s been dumped. Playacting the spurned lover at midnight.

Well, fuck it. That’s exactly what’s happening. 

“Winin’ and dinin’ my Mac- that’s my Mac, you foreign freak,” Jack mumbles, pulling up the sash and leaning out for some fresh air (fresh air his left foot, nothing smells right up here). “More money than sense, and you don’t care who knows it. Or am I just jealous that he got to you first?”

The wine promises no answers, but he has another go at it regardless.  

“No. I’ll do a lot for an airplane, but not that. Not my type, not any of the girls…how many girls has that been now? Not one. Not one of ‘em to hold a candle to my Mac, long-haired and stupid and he still hasn’t worked out that the ‘60s are over…” His bottle falls off the sill; trying to grab it, Jack merely succeeds in following it out the window. 

He wakes up at five the next morning, soaked in dew, with two resolutions clear in his head. One: that promise he’d made to Mac about not drinking solo had been sound enough, regardless of the person he’d made it to, and he’d probably better stick by it in future. 

Two: enough dillydallying. He’s gonna stop pranking around, get his life in order, and then get the hell out of dodge. Nothing else was keeping him in Minnesota, that's for sure. 

Murdoc's almost done him a favour. The way things were going, would he have ever stopped daydreaming about one and two when three was right there in the flesh? Maybe not. Probably not. 

"What Mac would call a catalyst," Jack mutters, as he goes about breaking back into his own house. 

Three resolutions. If (when!) he's leaving, he's really gonna have to stop saying things like that. 


	4. March 1988

When there's a fire going, the coffee shop looks unbearably quaint and cosy. Time to ruin the mood, Murdoc considers.

"Suppose you're in a prize-winning scientist's laboratory, and she explains the two of you have been exposed to a bacterium that will kill you both in twenty-four hours. She's prepared a syringe of antidote, but only the one. Do you give it to her so she can continue her life-giving work, or do you take it yourself?"

Mac doesn't even look up from the wood he's whittling (he does seem constitutionally incapable of sitting still. That lack of patience, while understandable, might be an issue later). "What's your obsession with the trolley problem, anyway? You're always asking me variations on the same question."

"Reading philosophy at university. My nihilism is well-earned, I can assure you." Does the man brew tea in a solution of truth serum? He's always saying more to MacGyver than he means to give away. 

"But these false dichotomies, they're never anything like how life works- what am I even doing making this decision? Why isn't she? Where's her colleagues?"

"She has...oh, I don't know. It's a secret laboratory in the middle of the woods, you came across it by accident."

"Hunting or something, I guess. Um- see, this stuff seems so contextual. When you're just describing it in words, I don't have anything to go on like I would in real life. I can't watch her body language, or see if she has a pet dog she loves or anything like that, can I? Of course it's going to be hard to decide, when I don't have the right information."

"Sometimes you don't."

"But I'd have instinct to go by, which I haven't in a thought experiment." He inspects the spindle minutely, carves off a few more fragments. "That's the kind of comment that makes me sure you're not a writer. You always make it personal."

"Now who's talking false dichotomies?" He should never have told MacGyver that he wrote spy novels; the story’s been impossible to keep up. A mistake, though a telling one. 

"Well. Not just a writer- the answer is, neither of us get it. I'm calling in the authorities."

"You're in the middle of nowhere! She's an anti-social hermit with no way of getting in touch with the outside world."

"But she has a lab, right? I'd bet I could rig up some kind of radio from what she has lying around. Even in that twenty-four hour window."

"You're very sure of yourself."

"About a thing like that, yeah." MacGyver empties the bucket of shavings into the fireplace, breaks out the sandpaper. "About others- I mean, how do I know she's even telling the truth? Maybe this vaccine is actually going to make me a carrier, and our hermit's just been waiting for a greedy volunteer to come by and infect the whole world."

Murdoc blinks: that is a considerably nastier variation than he'd been considering.

No doubt about it, MacGyver's got the right instincts. A knowledge of practical chemistry that will allow him to arrange no end of nasty tricks in the field. A body...well, difficult to view the subject with strict objectivity, but it's certainly in good training. An amusing, soft-spoken way about him, guaranteed to put even hardened criminals off their guard. And all that pent-up violence bubbling away beneath. 

A few years only. A few years, to drip-feed necessary tradecraft into the man's dreams, to warn contacts not to shoot the new arrival on sight, and to slaughter a few inconvenient adversaries who he's enjoyed playing cat and mouse with (where has Pete Thornton been hiding himself lately?) A pity to end those little delights, but preferable to any awkward passages while he's easing MacGyver into the field.

Once that's done, he'll have that ideal theoretical of the intelligence business: a partner who can't be bought, blackmailed or broken. Good for a solid ten or fifteen years at least. And after that- what? Precautions aside, he's never thought about making it to that age. Reflexes slow, brain dull- more accurately, he'd done so only with distaste. Dying in conflict had seemed a fate to postpone, not one to escape. 

Perhaps he ought to make arrangements, in case anything should happen to him first...no, that really would be too soft. MacGyver will escape Minnesota with him, or not at all. 

Love being considered as a heartfelt concern for the welfare of a second party, sadism as a heartfelt concern for the pain of a second party, his emotions clearly fall into the latter category. A lover could hardly find wry amusement in their idol suffering, in egregiously drawn-out agonies. Whereas the idea of a perfectly-trained sleeper agent continuing to rot out his days as a suburban barista (in the absence of a charming wakeful assassin) strikes him as hilarious. 

Clearly then, this isn't love. Lust? Certainly. With the additional attraction of a mechanism that will help keep him alive longer- now, that sounds reasonable enough. 

MacGyver brings his thumb across the wood a touch too rapidly; he winces and pulls a splinter out with his teeth. "Ouch."

"Oh dear," Murdoc murmurs. Quite instinctively. Quite sympathetically. 

Quite lovingly. 

He can lie to his superiors, he can lie to his victims. Certainly to MacGyver, but he cannot afford to tell himself lies. 

An infirmity as much as if he'd developed an allergy to latex, or lost an arm, or his vision- but he'd find a way to work around any of those. _Inside of a needle, inside of a egg, inside of a duck..._ this too can be overcome. He'll just have to take precautions. 

"So what happens? Do I pass muster?"

"Hmm? Oh yes. You're right, the scientist was lying, but you produced a radio out of rubber bands and the day was saved. Well done."

"If only real life was that easy," MacGyver comments. "All right, I should be able to apply your linseed oil tonight, once I've got the woodworking done. What does the theatre need a distaff for, anyway?"

_Because it's a traditional Scandinavian token of betrothal, which I know even if your ridiculous transplanted culture has forgotten, and it amused me greatly to have you make one._

“Ah,” Murdoc says, and stops. No falsehood is prepared. None are coming to mind. This is a troubling state of affairs. 

“You’re not planning it for Penny, are you?”

“What- no. Certainly not!”

“Just askin’. Rumour around town has it you’re pretty sweet on her. And these things used to be the bridegroom’s gift, before the wedding- did you know that? Looks like you did.”

"I haven't asked him yet," Murdoc says, applying dignity like a tourniquet.

“Him- right. I get it. Sorry. Didn’t mean to press you.” 

What a time to lose interest. “Wouldn't you like to know who?”

“Good god, no. Your personal life’s your concern.”

“But you were just speculating about Penny and I, with such interest-”

“Okay, I shouldn't have done that. Just don’t want to hear about it, okay?”

...ah. So this potential paragon of assassins has one minor flaw: he’s sexually unavailable. Not a problem for a fellow partner in slaughter, rather an inconvenience in other respects. Although culture shock can work wonders. 

“Shall we talk about something outrageously American instead? Guns, perhaps. Or not. Penny said you disliked guns.”

“Penny’s lugging up ancient history,” MacGyver says, not looking any less bitter. “A couple of us managed to kill another kid when we were ten year olds, fooling around. She figures I ought to have a lot of- what was her phrase? Emotional baggage.”

“It seems a charitable assumption.” He has long since run out of tea, which is aggravating. But now is hardly the time to mention it.

“Yeah, well. Did for a while- but they’re tools. Same as my SAK, or my toaster.”

“But you use your knife for nearly everything except its intended purpose, I’ve observed. And the toaster is innocuous enough.” He ought to be grateful, that he won’t have to retrain the man out of another basic humanitarian instinct (of which MacGyver has an inconvenient number). “Whereas guns are for- murder. Killing things.”

“Yup.”

“You are remarkably blase.”

“Not exactly teatime material, that story,” MacGyver says, though there’s smoldering satisfaction in his eyes. “Speaking of which, should I brew you another pot?”

“That’d be very welcome- but now you’ve intrigued me. Besides,” Murdoc says, gesturing. “A wintry firelit afternoon is an ideal time for horror stories. As per all those Christmas ghost stories.” 

“Huh- is that British? It’s not a Minnesota thing.”

“I would have thought it was any reasonably civilised nation. Charles Dickens, at least- never mind.” Why is he blathering about Dickens, when he could be listening to his innamorato’s tale of delicious woe? “Please. Do continue.”

“Think I’ll make some hot chocolate- and as soon as I say the magic words, you come down,” MacGyver says to Becky. “How’d you know?”

“I had a hunch,” she says, tossing a scrapbag on the counter. “And I’m due at sewing circle pretty soon - but I’ll stick around for a while if there’s hot chocolate. Making it with milk?”

“Of course!”

The next few minutes are filled with boringly domestic chatter. Murdoc sips his tea, privately fuming. There won’t be any wrenching horrors while the niece is here, she brings out all MacGyver’s softness. Another reason for waiting a few years before recruiting the man. As matters stand now, she is an unavoidable and quite immovable incumbency. 

(He’ll have to quietly arrange a college scholarship for her, if it looks like she won’t be earning one by her own efforts. A scholarship for somewhere very far away from Minnesota, for maximum emotional trauma on MacGyver's part. Perhaps her native Pacific Northwest- which state is it, Oregon? Washington? One of those.)

“So any pieces of mine that she doesn’t sell, she’ll just bring back from the fair for me. But she says they ought to. And I’ve asked her to keep an eye out for a second-hand quilting machine, just in case- the Singer’s in pretty good repair for an antique, but I’d like another one for the heavy-duty stuff.”

“What about your allowance? That ought to be enough for a brand-new one.”

“Oh well,” Becky says. “All that money’s going into savings.”

That comment is very deliberately not aimed in his direction. Becky Grahme does not approve of him. (Not so much armed hostility as cold war. Neither of them wish to give Mac cause for alarm.)

Murdoc waits, patiently, through the brewing of the chocolate and giggles and cuddles, until the hour chimes and MacGyver finally shuts the door on her. Waits while the man meanders about, taking a couple of dollars from the tip jar and ringing up a brownie, poking the fire. Waits, with a rising sense of delightful anticipation. 

“You know, they asked me if I wanted to keep her. After the funerals.”

“Your niece, you mean?”

“My sister didn’t think of making a will- they just assumed I’d take care of her, if the worst ever happened. Which was fair enough.” He takes a bite of brownie, talks through the mouthful. “And I was in an okay place at the time. I’d just about got my life back together after the divorce. Even talking to Jack about selling the shop to finance a plane for us, once he’d earned his commercial pilot’s license. He never really forgave me when that fell through, and I guess I can’t blame him...but you know, blood and water. I had to make sure I could take care of Becky.”

Where’s this going, burying a body for the taxi driver? He hadn’t expected to have earned that much of MacGyver’s trust- not yet. 

“And actually, it was all going fine for a couple of months, or as fine as it’s going to be when you have a homesick teenager who’s trying to force herself to be cheerful- but never mind about that, she’d be upset I even mentioned it. Then my past came back to bite me. This stupid invention I’d been trying to patent, it’d got me tangled up in a lot of legal fees and lawsuits and stuff.”

“What sort of invention?”

“Building a better mousetrap,” MacGyver says irritably. “Doesn’t matter. Point is, I thought I’d finally got quit of the whole mess, and then I got hit with one last slap in the face and meanwhile I’m having to pay alimony.” He finishes the brownie and starts in on the hot chocolate. “But- well, I don’t give up too easily. Couldn’t get a mortgage on the shop, they said I wasn’t a good enough risk, so I scraped together what I could and emptied what was left of my bank account and just about made it. Barely.“

Someone’s glancing through the window, eying the espresso machine in a speculative fashion. Murdoc gives them a very hard stare and they move on. 

“Jack was doing one of his stints in prison again, so he wasn’t any help. And there was supposed to be some cash coming once my sister’s estate was settled, but that was taking forever- more lawyers, of course- so the only luck I had going for me was that it was summertime. I had a garden going, and my fishing tackle, and a couple of decent layers- - has Becky introduced you to Priscilla and Posy yet?” 

“She has. Orpingtons, I recall?”

“Lifesavers,” MacGyver says, with affection. It takes Murdoc a moment to realise that he’s not referring to a breed. “Of course, they’re also pretty delicious. It took a lot of self-control not to cook them for dinner- by the end of the summer I’d had to sell my jeep just to keep the shop going. And of course I couldn’t get Becky anything for school, and of course she said it didn’t matter, and I told her off for lying to me, and things were just getting worse and worse. But at least I’d managed to take care of her, more or less, until the last Sunday before school started.”

“And then- well, it’s Sunday morning, and I’m making French toast. Which I’ve been doing every morning for about a month now, because the church pantry always stocks white bread even when they don't have anything else. And fried is about the only way you want to eat that stuff, unless you’re using it to soak up bacon grease.”

MacGyver seems to have forgotten he has a listener. He's still enough now: speech even slower than usual, and eyes half-closed. 

“So- well, Becky’s still just a kid, and she’s been so good about not touching the shop pastries, but understandably she’s sick to death of French toast. And she just point blank refused to eat it. Said she’d wait until the free school lunch next day, and that I couldn’t make her eat it if she didn’t want to.”

“I assume you did.” This is not proving as enjoyable an experience as he’d anticipated. He wants his wry secret agent protege back, not this flashback to what broke him badly enough to make him usable material. 

“I didn’t, though,” MacGyver murmurs. “Just ate it all myself, and I wish I could say it was the worst meal I’ve ever had. It wasn’t. It was delicious, and I needed it, and the guilt didn’t kick in until I’d finished the last bite and had to get to grips with being an absolute failure. Couldn’t manage college, couldn’t manage my marriage, couldn’t even look after the niece I loved better than anything else in the world. And if I couldn’t do that, if I had to give her up to foster care to make sure she was looked after-”

There is a pause, and a sip of hot chocolate. 

“Anyway. I went to a friend of mine who’s a police officer, laid it out straight. He let me borrow a car and his rifle, which of course he shouldn’t have done, and I went out and shot a couple does- which I shouldn’t have done, since it wasn’t hunting season and I couldn’t have paid for a license even if it was. Only time I’ve ever had to ask him for a favour, and I hope I never need to again, but- I suppose there’s some compensation to living in a small town however much I hate it. He cut me a break when I really needed one. Becky and I spent the rest of the day butchering and cooking and eating, and by the time she was getting tired of venison sandwiches for dinner every day, the estate had settled and we could start living again. And it’s never been as rough as that again, thank god. But I haven’t hated guns since,” MacGyver says, quietly. “Still don’t like them much, but- yeah. Got me out of a jam. And that breakfast aftermath was the worst feeling I’ve ever had, knowing that someone I loved was depending on me and there was nothing I could do about it- you ever been through anything like that? Had a feeling you did, or I wouldn't have gone on and on like this.”

“Yes,” Murdoc says, with an abruptness that surprises him. “My sister- it’s worse when you’re a child, I suspect. At least you knew that someone would care for Becky if you couldn’t. I knew nobody was coming to save her.”

That is not a story he should tell. There is too much concrete data wrapped up in it, too many ways for a listener to trace him back to his roots. Too many emotional details, that could give an adversary like Pete Thornton an edge.

“Let’s hear it.”

Upon second thought, this had better be love after all. 

Because if he finds out that he’s just been played by a devious Great Game player with a good line in sob stories - why, how will his self-esteem ever take the strain?

”Her name was Ashton…”


	5. March 1990

There’s a particular park Becky’s favoured, ever since coming to Mission City. Not much of a place. Just a couple of cheap benches and swings. Parked next to a brackish pond that has to be one of the least impressive in Minnesota’s traditional ten thousand, and smells strongly of salt. 

So a little like the sea, and sometimes, when she’s tired of being brave and studious and unshakably cheerful, she comes to here to recuperate. To dream about waves and seagulls crying out, to promise herself that she’ll have that again. 

Strictly metaphorical dreaming. It’s always too cold in this spot (it’s always too cold everywhere); she layers all she can bear to wear and paces the park briskly, hands tucked in pockets. That’s another sort of relief, too. The family habit of keeping busy has ripened into something of a compulsion; her purse is never without a skein of knitting, or embroidery, or at least a pocket knife and a chunk of wood to whittle. A lot of school expenses - fees for field trips, fundraisers- she pays for by selling cute little knickknacks to classmates. Her uncle never even needs to hear about them. 

_And when I do go, when I have a nice shoreside house down in Southern California or Texas or somewhere, you’ll be there to share it with me. I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more._

A squeaky, tuneless whistling in the distance: she doesn’t need to see the familiar peaked cap to know Jack Dalton’s on his way. Her partner in exile- what with both being expatriated orphans, and her uncle’s best friend, they’ve come to be nearly as close as family. 

Born on the Gulf Coast, hospitable sleepy country, unless charged by hurricanes that sound so much better than Northern blizzards. Sometimes he tells her stories about his childhood, languorous heated summers. They put a warmth into her bones like nothing else (hope, longing, the quiet relief of just being around someone who remembers a better place than this). It still surprises her he never went back. 

Though not that much, when she considers who he’d be leaving. 

“How’s it going?” Jack asks, as they stand and watch the feeding ducks. 

“Nervous. Really nervous- I can’t concentrate on schoolwork, or my sewing or anything,” she admits. “It’ll be another week before Western Tech’s letter arrives, at least I’ll know then.”

“Mac said you’d already been accepted for Minnesota State.”

“I know- but I’m not going there. If I can’t get in anywhere good, maybe I’ll just take a year off and hitchhike. Cross-country, if I can dig up a junker from somewhere. Uncle Mac’s taught me enough to keep one running if I can swing the gas money, or trade with someone who does.”

“Pretty dangerous plan,” Jack observes. “I like it.”

He takes two bottles of beer from his coat pockets, immerses them at the shoreline, with just the tips sticking above water. Ease of long practice: this is something she's watched him do many times before. 

“I think you’re mature enough to try one of these now. If you feel up to it.”

Becky shakes her head. “Nah. Not your brand, I can’t stand it.”

“Huh. One of your classmates beat me to the punch?“

“You kiddin'? It was my uncle’s idea. When I told him about how the other kids drink all the time and I was feeling sort of left out, he went out and got a six-pack. Said that I ought to try it under controlled circumstances, so I had my first drink curled up on the couch watching _Dynasty_. Tasted awful. And I fell asleep after the first bottle.”

Jack kicks at a pebble. “And here I’ve been working so hard not to corrupt you- short people like us, it always hits that way the first few times. You have to work up a tolerance.“

“Uh, that’s probably why he said not to mention it to you. In case you wanted to give me more practical drinking advice.”

“Or because he nicked the six-pack out of my fridge. I thought I’d drunk it in a fit of absent-mindedness.”

Becky chuckles. “Yeah, that’d really stand up in a court of law, wouldn’t it? ‘Your honour, I think maybe my best friend stole some of my beer, but I was drunk at the time so I’m not really sure.’”

Jack’s rambunctious laugh resounds through the park: a couple of ducks squawk, flutter upwards. Realising there’s nothing to worry about, they settle down again in almost the same spots. Only the places changed. 

“Well, there’ll be no more drinking for me soon. I handed in the down payment today on the plane today. Mission City’s gonna have to find another taxi driver.”

“Nice one,” she says, almost in a whisper. “We’re gonna miss you.”

“Yeah. I thought I’d leave it until September, go the same time as you- but that really would have been hard on your uncle, and I just couldn’t wait any longer.” He retrieves the beer. “Got that pocket knife of yours?”

“You really need your own,” Becky says, prying off the caps (they go into her purse, for crafting). 

“I guess. Usually I’ve just borrowed Mac’s, but- yeah. You’re right, I do.”

“Have mine,” she says, slipping it into his pocket. “As a going-away present.”

“Thanks. You’re a good kid. I know you’ll knock ‘em dead at college.”

“Hang on,” Becky says. “If you’re leaving, and I’m leaving, maybe it’s a good thing I haven’t got that letter yet. I need to think about whether I should stay in Minnesota, go to state school after all-”

Jack draws in a sharp, short breath; he motions as if he’s about to grab her by the shoulders, before remembering he’s holding two beers. “Becky, no. Find some new mistakes of your own to make. Don’t repeat your uncle’s.”

“But being alone here, without either of us- Jack, what’s he going to do? He’ll be so lonely.”

“I don’t think so. That theatre guy...” (Jack never uses the real name, if he can help it.) “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s got your uncle wrapped around his little finger- and I can’t fault his taste, at least. But he probably has an English country house and a penthouse in LA- if anyone in Mission City deserves that kind of fairy tale luck, it’s Mac. You know what he’s been waiting for? Some day this fall, when you’ve been gone for months and the shop’s slow, and your uncle’s looking at your picture and gettin’ kinda choked up, he’ll just waltz into the shop with two plane tickets for Paris- and that’ll be that.”

“That’s so not fair,” Becky says. “You’re the one who’s been here for him, all these years.”

“Yeah. Also, I’m a fat, broke ex-con who’s one bad landing away from losing everything. Doesn’t look too great by comparison,” Jack says, looks at the beer contemplatively. He’s yet to taste a drop of it, she realises. “So don’t worry about him. Worry about who you’re going to be in life, that’ll be a hell of a lot more interesting. Maybe make sure you’ll have somewhere for him to land afterwards, when theatre guy dumps him- because I will just bet you that’ll happen.”

“But- I mean, suppose none of this does happen. Suppose it doesn’t work out right, and he’s just left alone? He’ll be miserable up here, and it’ll be on my conscience.”

Jack sighs. “Now you really do sound like your uncle. Just like twenty years ago, when he was trying to justify Ellen to me- she convinced him that she wouldn’t be able to cope if he left Minnesota, and he went along with it. Always was way too willing to knuckle under- now if she’d had half the brains he does, they might have got somewhere. But you know how that turned out. And then he goes and repeats the same mistake again, when you came along.”

“You mean, by taking me?”

“Not that!” Jack says, utterly horrified. “A bright kid like you knocking around group homes and foster care? Hell, I’d have taken you in myself if it’d come to that.”

“I don’t think the courts would have let you,” Becky observes, feeling a warm glow. She’d wondered about that, on a few dark nights. Nice to be confirmed right. 

“Unofficially. Where was I? - oh yeah, so we were in it with a chance. I was working on my pilot’s license, he had the mechanical know how to keep a clunker running, we were going to sell everything and take off for Texas. And then you show up- but I told him, why should it make any difference? She’s a smart kid, you can homeschool her better than the schools could anyway, the more the merrier. But he wouldn’t hear of it, because he thought it’d be too dangerous a life for you. Worst mistake he ever made, if you ask me. Not Ellen, not that shindig about the engine patent- but being too afraid on your behalf. Don’t ever do that to yourself, Becky.“ He finally takes a sip of the neglected beer. “Don’t give up on your own dreams to look after somebody else. Tough lesson, I know. Took me twenty years to learn it.”

“Is it selfish to say I’m glad you did?” Becky asks. “I mean, if you’d taken off- there’d be nobody talking to me now. I’d have to frighten the ducks all by myself.”

“There is that,” Jack admits. “Hang on to that sense of humour, kid. You’re gonna need it in this world.”

They turn back from the pond, sit for a few minutes on the benches. Sun’s nearly set now. Always goes by too fast, here.

“Have you told him yet? About the plane?”

“No. Hold off mentioning it until I do, will ya? I’m gonna have to work up the nerve.”

“Don’t go in drunk. That’ll really annoy him.”

“Good advice.” He offers her the bottle again. 

“Nah. Really, the taste was horrible.”

“That part you just have to get used to. And since we’re apparently doing going-away presents today- here, I just picked this up from the post office.” Jack hands her a package done up in brown paper, which she's careful not to tear as she unwraps. There’s a very exotic address on the label.

Fragrance. Tea- her favourite kind of tea, which she hasn’t tasted since Oregon. Far too expensive to worry her uncle over. 

“How- how’d you know?”

Jack winks. “Conmen have to keep a couple of secrets.”

Which is all the answer Becky gets, though she teases him all the way home.


	6. April 1990 redux

Pete Thornton is a man of few illusions. 

He knows, for instance, exactly why he decided to join the Phoenix Foundation (one more loss to what bitter DXS staffers have taken to calling the “private sector brain drain”): a salary three times what he was being paid as a civil servant, and a rent-controlled apartment in a cushy neighbourhood in Pasadena. He knows that the breakup of his marriage was not the fault of his job; that the job had always been a way to justify not going home.

Most of all, he knows himself to be a cog in an intricate Great Game, designed to eat lives and spit out nonsense. The twentieth century’s antibodies against itself: intelligence is a game of smoke and mirrors, lulling governments into inaction with much ado about nothing at all. Provoking small wars in the body politic like fevers, like bloodletting. The secret agent’s duty is to die for a message that may be not only encoded, but meaningless. 

When an anxious barista asks to play- well. The board is in flux. Everything important is on hold at present, while the Soviet Union teeters; they could use a fresh new piece as distractionary cannon fodder. Will he turn out to be one of Murdoc’s men, long since bought and sold? A frustrated James Bond aficionado, overreaching all sanity in a fast-paced, fast-ending mid-life crisis? Or more realistically, a heartsick desperado who craves a particularly baroque suicide by cop.

But Pete chooses not to read any of these in MacGyver. His eyesight might be failing, but he listens to words spilling over themselves, to a disconcerted movement, to a heartbeat thumping too fast, and finds- love. 

Pete Thornton has few illusions left, but love is one he’s trying to hang on to. 

**************************

There is a room in the Mission City Community Theatre, not shown on any extant blueprints: filled with convincing masks, and death trap noodlings, and a tremendous variety of weapons. Currently being occupied not by that hero of rural dramas, Jacques Leroux, but by Murdoc. 

Having once decided to launder some of HIT’s ill-gotten gains into such a banal enterprise, he could hardly have let the opportunity for a secret lair slip past. (Another secret lair: he already had four, but why not make it five?) Altogether commodious and pleasing, soothing in its silence and possessed of the best armoury he keeps on this continent. 

A shame he has to scrap the whole thing, but needs must. Since his last visit, Phoenix has moved in with all the subtlety of a blood-blind elephant. Ostensibly for their octopus-like charity efforts (copycats), but Nikki Carpenter has a first-floor office here, and they don’t waste her on paper-pushing. Who else in this moronic county could the agent be after?

Only, now is months too early for project MacGyver (he’d had a fancy to finish in October, in honour of the three year anniversary of a certain hockey game). The man’s still not taking the hint, and that blasted niece lacks a month to graduation- how does he play this, micromanagement or improvisation? Arranging a meetup elsewhere, later, might be simplest- but if Pete Thornton should show up first...

Murdoc starts sorting through his mask collection, setting a few aside for transport and dissolving more in a tub of acid. Perhaps- just possibly, it might be worthwhile setting up another hypothetical for MacGyver. Yes. Lovers are supposed to confide in each other, aren’t they? 

He sings snatches of show-tunes as he works. Anything goes, in a hole in the world like a great black pit, and if he has to kill a thousand men, the Phantom of the Opera will kill and kill again...that’s everything. A little dust and a few theatrical costumes are all that’s left. 

And a canister of tea. He opens it, out of sheer desire to enjoy that aroma of burning...which doesn’t greet him. Instead- coffee! Cheap coffee, badly roasted and oxidized. 

Fear crawls over him, with distasteful fingers. Someone is already aware of this place; someone familiar with his habits, someone who’s ignored everything else, the evidence of crimes past and crimes future. To taunt him with a message that nobody else would even notice. For what reason?

Murdoc dumps out the coffee, noticing as he does so that there’s a square of duck tape affixed inside, pinching the sides of an old crack. Another addition. 

If he didn’t have an eye for small details, for subtle inaccuracies, he’d be dead half a dozen times over by now. He tears it off and examines it. There’s a fragment of paper stuck here, a message written in indelible pencil. 

_Please kidnap me._

Well. 

That is an _invitation_.

********************

Early Monday morning is never good. Everyone is sour and on edge. Today the barista has fluffed an out-of-towner’s drink order; and while he’s been refunded and apologised to, the man isn’t satisfied. He just stays and stays, waiting for his new drink and throwing out insults. A few regulars murmur, but nobody seems to know what to do. Certainly not the barista, who’s hot and ashamed and silent. 

Everyone realises afterward that they’d heard the clink of a bolt being drawn home, noticed the darkness creep in as the curtains closed; but they’re all preoccupied, caught up in their own thoughts, and don’t notice what’s happening until it’s too late. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, the first one to scream gets shot.”

A woman, inevitably, screams. In seconds there’s two matching bullet holes in her skirt, and she’s sobbing in outraged horror. 

“Next time it’ll be the head,” Murdoc says pleasantly. “Any other takers? No? Good.”

He’s chosen the outfit for this part rather carefully. Black cowboy hat, leather, a dark ribbon of a cravat that flaunts the vulnerability of his throat, should anyone care to try their luck. No one will. 

“We’re going to play a little game, which I’m sure is familiar to everyone. This is a stick-up. All the valuables, please.”

“Listen here, you-” the out-of-towner starts. 

A pearl-handled gun noses up and down his body with careless indecency, like the muzzle of an overly excited puppy. 

“Wallets, watches, all that sort of thing. You all know how this works, you’ve seen it on television.”

They surrender their worldly goods, pitiful heap enough and half of it fake, with the tickle of the gun as encouragement. Murdoc retrieves a pathetic imitation handbag to hold the loot, empties his own bag of half a dozen rolls of silvery duck tape. 

“You,” he says to the barista, waving the gun for punctuation. “Start wrapping them up. Ankles, wrists, mouths.”

The barista does, gently but efficiently. Everyone acquiesces; they know it’s not in him to do a job badly. Murdoc watches, plants a boot on someone’s hand while he waits. Oh, is it that out of towner? What a coincidence. 

He takes an ostentatious look at the cash register while the barista’s back is turned, and allows everyone to see his amused contempt at the paltry sum. But into the handbag it goes; he hangs this over his shoulder, where the blood-crimson leather will contrast nicely. A thing worth doing, is worth doing with artistry. 

The taping’s done. “Now what?” the barista asks. 

“Now, my dear MacGyver, you’re about to become a hostage. Don’t worry unduly. Statistically, it’s quite safe- as long as no police officers start shooting.”

Murdoc tucks the gun into a convenient place behind one ear, maneuvers his captive to the door, allows it to close without another thought for the hapless trussed humans inside. Or the two Phoenix agents bleeding out their last on the opposite roof. 

Into the rented jeep, down the streets, towards the highway. He puts away the gun at the town’s boundary line. 

“I’ve been fantasising someone would come in and do that for years,” MacGyver confesses, not a little sheepishly. 

“I know,” Murdoc says, allowing himself to relish the unfamiliar empathy. “In your place, it’s exactly what I would have wanted. We’re going to make quite the partnership, MacGyver.”

“And I really never have to go back.”

“No. More than likely there’s a premature death in store for us, falling over a cliff, being shot by government agents, but that one particular fate you may considered well-escaped- how fast do you intend to drive?” Murdoc asks, as the needle creeps past seventy. 

“I’m a captive under orders, aren’t I? As fast as I’ve always wanted,“ MacGyver says, still frowning in preoccupation. 

Twenty minutes later, when a belated siren starts to wail after them, is when he starts to smile. 

*******************

Red-eyed Becky paces the kitchen floor, restless. She can’t even get outside for a walk; there’s a circus of police officers down in the shop, talking to witnesses and tallying clues, and she can’t face that right now. Jack huddles on a stool, nursing a bottle of whisky. 

(“No,” she’d said, as he’d stopped at the liquor store. “Jack, I need you.”

“Just the one. Not enough to get drunk on. Just to numb it a bit.”

And she’d shrugged, in angry acquiescence; and he’d looked ashamed, but had bought it anyway.)

“It’s all my fault, Becky.”

“Our fault. We both knew he was bad news, we should have...”

“Should have made Mac listen,” Jack completes. “Found the right words- there must have been something he did, some kind of warning what a crazy bastard he is!”

“But there wasn’t! He covered his tracks too well, made sure that if we’d said anything we’d have just sounded- crazy. And now he’s out there and who knows what’ll happen-”

Becky trips, over the scrapbag that she’d brought in from downstairs and unthinkingly discarded.

“Knowing he’s out there, not being able to help,” she says, ripping the bag open. Something to do with her hands, any kind of positive action- it won’t bring any relief, but she can’t help herself. A brown paper bag comes flying out. The kind that they use in the shop for the desserts. What’s that doing in there? She’s always very neat-

“Jack. Come and look at this, tell me if I’m going crazy.”

He stumbles off, looks at the paper over her shoulder. 

_Becky- all okay, it’s secret spy work. Don’t tell anyone, I’ll be in touch. Love._

“Is that it?”

She flips the bag over. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Not a word for me. Not a hint- I’ve changed my mind, I really am going to get drunk now.”

“Jack,” Becky hisses. “You always get chatty when you’re drunk. You start talking to things. And this is a secret! We gotta keep it for my uncle’s sake, or who knows what’ll happen. Pretend we’re still scared stiff.”

“I am scared stiff!”

“I’m thrilled,” Becky says, digging a lighter out of the junk cupboard (a drawer wouldn’t be big enough). “Getting out there, being able to make a difference- it’s everything he ever wanted. He’ll pull through it, I know he will.”

“Playing sidekick to theatre guy?”

“At least we know now why we thought he was lying to us. But it was all in a good cause.” She burns the paper over the sink, and rinses away the ashes.

“I’m not so sure I believe that,” Jack mutters, taking one last sip before he empties out the bottle. “All that Iran-Contra stuff, and that coup in San Marcos…okay, okay. Becky, what do you want to do now? Sounds like he might not be coming back. The shop’s yours now.”

Her eyes widen. “Whoa! I’m still in school, remember? I can’t be making people coffee all day.”

“Oh- Becky, are you going to ask me to fill in? You know everyone in town hates Dalton Wednesday.”

“Well, what would we be doing if we didn’t know he was alright? I mean, we’d spend a few days panicking and crying, but then we’d have to start running the shop again or there wouldn’t be anything for him to come back to.”

“There’s a plane waiting for me,” Jack moans. “She has a red nose and plush seats and I was going to fly her all the way to Texas next week. With a few stops for fuel along the way.”

“School’s done in a month and a half. I think that if he’s not back by then, I’ll have a nice comprehensive breakdown, we close up the shop, and you take me touring America to cheer me up. You’ll love that, right? All those routes and maps you’ve charted?”

“You weren’t the member of the family I was planning that trip with,” Jack says, a little wry. “But- okay, I can follow what you’re saying. How is it that you’re thinking this through so fast? I was still flailing around with the secret agent part.”

“It helps not to be half-drunk.”

“Ouch.”


	7. Mayday

The airport hotel’s idea of luxury accomodations is distressingly tasteless. Murdoc has long since grown accustomed to filling the closet with tedious paintings and objets d’art that are nothing of the sort. It leaves the place looking sterile, but that’s all to the better. 

He had insisted on a top-floor room, ostentatiously, and added the request for a single king-sized bed as a sort of afterthought. (Besides him, MacGyver had gone very still and tense. Generally the right instincts, but that sort of tell will have to be trained out of him. Soon.)

Murdoc sprawls across the bed, casually thumbing through a well-worn edition of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. He hasn’t read it in years, and it’s a wonderfully intimidating prop. 

MacGyver emerges from the shower in a tightly-knotted bathrobe, absent his usual scent of sweat and burnt coffee. Another telltale sign washed away. Good, good. 

“I expect to be reading for another quarter of an hour or so,” Murdoc informs him. “Do you have any objection to my turning out the lights after that?”

“Is that-uh,” MacGyver says, going very pale as he slips under the bedclothes. 

Murdoc ignores him. Time enough to answer a question when he’s asked one. In the meantime, he has a very entertaining meditation on backworldsmen to work through. 

“Look, are you going to fuck me or what?”

Thus goes Zarathustra, sailing to the floor. “What a remarkably indecorous way of asking! Are you asking?”

“I- look, I’m not an idiot. I don’t know what the hell a rich playboy assassin would want me for, but that’s the only reason you brought me along, isn’t it?”

“Supposing I say yes,” Murdoc murmurs, reaching out to caress an oh-so-vulnerable spinal column (what an anatomy it is, to be sure). “Supposing I said, yes indeed, you’ve burnt all your bridges, but I’ll see to it that you want for nothing so long as you pay the piper. Do you think you’d enjoy that?”

“I’ll do it.”

“Not the question.”

“Well, no! No, I wouldn’t!”

“Then the answer is no. We are not having any indecencies, until you come and ask me properly.” Murdoc retrieves his book, starts ruffling through the pages again.

The quivering lump besides him turns very indignant. “That’s it? You’re not going to do anything?”

“Oh, it’s a very tempting prospect,” Murdoc says, not looking up from the printed page. “And if I was in a less dangerous profession, it might do nicely. But alas, I do happen to be an international assassin, and I can’t afford to have a bedmate who’s plotting to stab me in the back. There are quite enough people who are paid to do that already.”

“Then what am I doing here?” 

“I told you. I want a partner in crime and your specialities happen to fit my requirements. It’s taken three years to train you up properly, and I’d find it rather a bore to do again.”

Some of the colour’s returning to MacGyver’s face. “So you want me for- me. Because I’m good with chemistry, and can throw a knife straight, and have at least a general idea what you’re on about, however violent you’re getting.”

“Essentially those reasons, yes. You know, I would rather appreciate the chance to continue reading? If it’s not very much trouble.”

MacGyver takes a breath. “Pete Thornton offered me a deal to be a Phoenix agent. If I help them take down you and HIT.”

This time Murdoc bookmarks the page. “And you’re laying down your cards, now? Interesting timing.”

“I wanted to see what sort of bed partner you’d make first,” MacGyver says, sardonic as he’s ever been. 

“Hmm. He’s going to be disappointed at my decision to take an extended- honeymoon. Imagine the man’s frustration, when all you have to report for six months is a travelogue of decadent luxury.”

A smile tugs at the corner of MacGyver’s mouth. “I think I can live with that. But at the end of six months?”

“You know, there have been occasions when HIT has severely inconvenienced me. During one regretful incident, they took away a favourite knife of mine and never gave it back.”

“I think I can sympathise.”

“I thought you might. And now. Book.”

“Right…” 

MacGyver rolls over, curled up like a child, and goes to sleep in remarkably short order. How trusting: but then, that was rather the point. 

That had turned out well, Murdoc reflects. Someone less intimate with death might be unnerved by their proximity to betrayal, tonight. That someone is not him.

Besides, in the long run...MacGyver’s accustomed to affection, to the steadying influence of Becky’s wide-eyed devotion and Dalton’s sympathetic heartiness. He’ll be hungry for it in a week, starving inside of a month. And there won’t be any. Luxury, and travel, and anything money can buy: but no touches, no private understandings. Not until he admits defeat and begs for love, one long quiet night- and the rest will come easily, then. 

Yes. Altogether, a very satisfactory night. 


	8. June 1990

Paris. London. In one episode of deliberate thumb-biting, even Los Angeles. 

Murdoc watches in satisfaction, as his protege flourishes. Talking tradecraft to criminals as though he's a veteran of the Great Game, putting on a few more pounds of muscle, acquiring a set of perfectly-balanced throwing knives (though he refuses to give up his SAK and does more with it than Murdoc would have believed possible). They spend two weeks in Germany at the _Technische Informationsbibliothek_ so that MacGyver can research every latest trend in the chemistry journals; he's only persuaded to leave with the promise of a return visit and a trip on Concorde. Everything the man should have had all along, he's enjoying to the fullest.

It’s...nice. 

******************

“Goodbye snowy Minnesota, hello smoggy Los Angeles,” Nikki says, as she enters Pete’s office. “A good thing, too. I was getting bored stiff doing those accounting audits all day.”

“That’s why I assigned you. If there was a grain of truth to the rumours, I knew you’d ferret it out faster than anyone else would.”

“In other words, I’m too competent for my own good.”

“How does a mission in tropical waters sound? We need an intervention in San Marcos. The wrong sort of democracy again, you know how it goes.” 

“That’s more like it,” Nikki agrees. “But- what was the point of this, really? We had every chance of getting Murdoc this time, and then you let him go.”

Pete sighs. “Wheels within wheels.”

“Two of our own, Pete. Two of our own dead for no good reason.”

“Murdoc isn’t superhuman. I’m not going to say it was their fault, but they were told what to expect...and if we take down HIT as a result, yes, I’d have to say it’d be an acceptable tradeoff. Besides- those may just have been Murdoc’s last killings. It’s all in your reports, the money and time he’s spent on this unassuming barista. I think we’re looking at a case of obsession strong enough to be called love.”

“Pete Thornton,” Nikki says, shaking her head. “You’ve been on Murdoc’s case too long. You’re actually hoping he gets a happy ending and disappears into the sunset.”

“Well, wouldn’t it be nice if somebody did? Because we know the good guys won’t.”

“There speaks a man who needs a long vacation. Go up to your cabin and catch yourself some salmon.”

“After four days in the rural backwoods? Nikki, I’m going to enjoy the LA pollution for all it’s worth.”

“Well. Can’t disagree with you there.”

******************

Doctor Zito is not a professional killer, just an enthusiastic one. As proof of which, his death trap - a cage fastened over a six-story drop, with acid slowly eating through the support cable - is apparently impervious to any escape attempts from the inside. 

The next time he accepts a contract, Murdoc privately vows, it will be on someone who understands how these things are done. Two months in was sooner than he’d anticipated, to initiate MacGyver into death as an art form- but the DXS had wanted Zito dealt with immediately after the gory LA police massacre. Always amusing, playing the right hand that knows not what it’s doing against the left. 

Only, a few details had gone wrong along the way. He waits in the cage and fumes. 

MacGyver isn’t wasting the time to look at him (good), but is staring at the gun lying halfway between him and Zito, like the fulcrum of a balance. 

“Go on,” Zito taunts. “Take the gun, kill me and take the key. That’s the only way you’ll get your lover back.”

“He’s not my lover,” MacGyver says. “Besides, I don’t like guns.”

Zito laughs. “An innocent one for this business, aren’t you? What a rural-” The laugh bubbles off into bloody choking, once there’s a knife lodged in his throat. 

“Murdoc,” MacGyver says. “I’m not getting this. What’s so important about the gun?”

The question makes Murdoc reconsider. If the death trap isn’t internal, but external- 

“Pressure plate. You step forward, no doubt it’ll trigger something lethal.”

“Uh-huh.” MacGyver takes a few steps back, throws himself over the floor and lands neatly on top of the cooling corpse. He takes a moment to wipe the knife clean before resheathing it. 

“Are you going to be all day over there? While I wait for my one-way elevator ride?”

“Good workmen look after their tools,” MacGyver says calmly, removing the key and unlocking the cage. “Okay, so that worked out. He’s dead, we’re not, everything’s good.”

“It would have gone better if you hadn’t made such a pig’s ear of that fight earlier. I’ve never seen anyone punch anyone so ineptly that they manage to spin themselves around in a circle.”

MacGyver’s mouth twitches, as he helps Murdoc out of the cage. “I never said I had formal training- and to be honest, I was kinda distracted.”

“Excuses make poor life-savers.”

“I know, I know, but - okay, so the henchman’s bodyslamming me against the wall, and all I could think was that this is the first time anyone’s touched me since Minnesota. Sounds stupid, but- oh, hell, it felt good. I hadn’t realised how much I missed that.”

Murdoc huffs. “This is not an acceptable state of affairs. What am I going to do with a partner who’ll get himself beaten in a fight for the sake of physical contact?”

A deliberate bit of rhetoric, to which MacGyver responds to exactly as desired; intrusion of physical boundaries, hands in intimate places. “Maybe try touching him?”

“There happens to be a corpse on the floor.” 

“I don’t care about that,” MacGyver says dismissively. “Twelve cops, and what he did to that Lieutenant Murphy- you wanted me to ask? Please. I’m asking.”

“Not now,” Murdoc says, deliberate in his impatience. “Help me lift him up, I want to see what happens when there’s a body on that pressure plate.”

They toss Zito over. The cage unexpectedly swings out (at such an angle as to decapitate anyone reaching for the gun), snapping free of its cable. The crash it makes, after plummeting through several floors, is remarkably resonant. 

“No acid in the cable at all, I’ll warrant,” Murdoc comments. “Rather an elegant mechanism- but we had best leave before we attract any more attention, wouldn’t you say?”

A postponement not precisely to be wished; but the frustrated lust in MacGyver’s eyes is its own kind of satisfaction. 

*************

"That was not what I expected," Murdoc says, in the aftermath. 

(Another hotel, a far better-appointed one than anything the Twin Cities could provide. MacGyver had slept for an hour and woken up demanding vanilla ice cream.)

"Not my fault, was it?"

"Oh, of sorts...you see, I was rather expecting to deflower you,” Murdoc says, turning another page of his Juvenal. “Enjoy your inept virginity, initiate you into the form with tediously loving patience. Instead, we have- competency? Even flashes of decidedly tutored genius?"

MacGyver chuckles, only a little drily. "You know I have an ex-wife, don't you?"

"I assure you, I haven't the slightest interest in your couplings with the female of the species. No, what's caught my curiosity is that you're far more practiced in the homoerotic than I had any reason to expect.“

He sighs, scraps noisily at the dish. "A couple of times. I got drunk a few times."

"But not so drunk that you've failed to profit by experience."

"Course not. I can’t drink that much cheap whisky, but it was an excuse...that Dalton guy, you probably ran into him once or twice. With the moustache?"

"Let me see. Alcoholic, ferociously annoying and possessing not an iota of style or dress sense- good lord, is that the way your tastes veer?" He’d known the taxi driver was important to MacGyver, of course, but- what a ridiculous blind spot. 

"He was around, that's all,” MacGyver says, putting the empty bowl back on the tray. “I mean, he'll - what's your word? He'll shag anything that stays still long enough. And Becky hadn't shown up then- course that'd have put an end to it anyway."

"Ah. Now that sounds more like the repressed, self-loathing Midwesterner I've come to know and love...though I doubt that even catching you _in flagrante_ could cure your niece of her hero worship."

"Maybe I didn't think she oughta be around it, all the same," MacGyver says sourly. "And quit it with the love stuff, I don't need you to lie to me. At least not about a thing like that."

"Do you know, that's the curious thing..." 

A casual, almost thoughtless lunge, and he's holding MacGyver in a headlock, so the other man's forced to look at him. "I am a professional of the intelligence business, I have murdered more people than I can either count or would care to, and despite all that- love! Childish hapless love, inspired by a middle-aged barista, that's what you bring out in me. Mythology is right, Cupid must be blind, but in the meantime....why, yes. Your abysmal accent is music to my ears, I gaze in fascination at your fingertips, and that ridiculous red pocket knife you persist in carrying makes me smile every time I see it. It is not a state of affairs I would have ever permitted myself, but I don’t seem to have any choice in the matter."

A slow, smug expression crosses MacGyver's face. "If that's even half true, I kinda like the idea of holding it over you."

"My dear troubleshooter, I do believe you're getting the idea."


	9. July 1990

Wilton Newberry has long since accepted that maintaining his sanity, in the inane morass of boredom that is Mission City, requires a self-indulgence bordering on lunacy; but even he can occasionally be shocked into something like normalcy. 

“Miss Parker, this really is a terribly irregular proceeding. I thought you had promised me, in the very strictest terms, that you would consult me before making any major expenditures.”

Penny Parker smiles at him sweetly. “Oh, I know- but I was in a hurry. That nice Becky Grahme, she was going to leave Mission City with absolutely nothing. I had to do something for her. But I will put the money back from my own trust fund, really- I mean, it was practically all my money in there anyway.”

Newberry does not quite grind his teeth, but he scrapes them a bit. Giving Penny control over the community theatre funds had been intended as practice; emptying that account in order to buy out a rundown coffee shop is exactly the sort of reason he hasn’t allowed her near the main trust fund. 

“Of course, it doesn’t matter very much, because I’m not going to be here for the next year of performances- and I just don’t think there’s anyone who’ll want to keep it up when I’m gone. But with everyone I like leaving so suddenly, I’m going too! Off to Hollywood. Now, won’t that be nice?”

“Miss Parker. I have seen you act, I have seen you sing, I have seen you dance. And in my honest opinion, you’ll never be cast in anything except comic parts.”

“Comic roles are fun!” Penny says happily. “Of course, since I’m going to be leaving, I’ll have to buy a new wardrobe, and everything- and do you know, I was talking with a lawyer from St Paul just yesterday? And he says that you must have misread one of your law books, because I showed him all the legal papers and apparently there’s no reason I shouldn’t have signing power for all my money now.”

Oh, crumbs. 

********************

A night’s sleeping on it has left her none the wiser; they’re just as lost as they were yesterday, Becky concludes. But with a sunrise like this to watch, blazing summer weather at last, how could she be happier?

Well, okay, she could, if they were a trio instead of a duo- but even as matters stand, there’s hot joy in her heart and a skip in her step. She and Jack have nosed their way down the continent in leisurely fashion, following along the course of the Mississippi until they’d reached St Louis, then tacking off in a south-westerly direction for Texas. A month of travel and weather conditions and instruments- Jack’s eager tutelage has her wondering about a pilot’s license of her own, one of these days. Now that she’s found a good brand of airsickness pills.

(It’s so nice to be over trees, instead of staring at them from underneath.)

In one fit of reckless giggling and a bet she hadn’t expected to win, he’d allowed her to fly the plane solo for a couple of minutes, and she hadn’t crashed it. 

Yesterday, though, a crucial bit of map had blown away in the wind, and Posy had pecked a hole in exactly the wrong place (the hens are coping very nicely with flying, to her relief- there isn’t anybody in Mission City who she’d trust not to cook them as a tasty chicken dinner). So now they’re lost. She’s going to make Jack buy a few extra maps once they find civilisation again. 

Right now, though? Clear skies and wind and so much waving grass, beautiful cowboy country, like in all the Westerns. Bacon and biscuit fixings waiting for breakfast in their cooler. Uncle or no uncle, just now she is utterly content. 

An engine noise in the distance, a pickup truck driving down the deserted highway. Becky takes out her bandanna and waves it down; it obligingly eases to a stop. 

“Hi. Uh- could you tell us where we are? Only we got a little lost.” 

“Oklahoma,” the driver says. “About fifteen minutes from the border, as your plane flies- do you know, Becky, you and Jack Dalton are two very difficult people to keep up with. I had a good bit of trouble trying to track you down.”

“Who are you?” 

“Pete Thornton. Don’t worry, I’m a friend.” 

He extends his hand for a shake, puts it back in his suit pocket when she doesn’t move. It’s an odd contrast, Becky realises; that decrepit truck compared to this well-groomed individual, whose only concession to informality is a slightly battered cap. 

“Rental,” Pete says, as if following her thoughts. “Only vehicle I could get on such short notice. I wanted to talk to you about your uncle.”

“Uncle Mac? You’ve got something to tell me?”

“I was rather hoping you could tell me, actually. You see, he was working for the government when that Murdoc character nabbed him, and he hasn’t checked in lately - and naturally we’re all worried about him. We want to know whether he needs any help.”

“You’re working for the government, then?”

“After a fashion. Phoenix Foundation-”

“If you’re arresting me, I want to see a lawyer,” Becky says, glancing at the tent- this would be a very good time for Jack to wake up already. “If you’re not arresting me, I don’t have anything more to say.”

“You’re not surprised by anything I’ve said. So MacGyver has told you that much...they found a knife wound in a murder victim last week,” Pete tells her, suddenly cold. “That’s not Murdoc’s style of killing. How far can your uncle throw one?”

“Jack!”

It’s a moment before Jack emerges from their cheery bright yellow tent- but he eyes the confrontation and immediately tackles Pete, shouldering the man into rich yielding dirt. Becky grabs up Priscilla protectively, watches in horror as the government agent flattens Jack, pinning him to the ground with a heavy knee. 

“Now then,” Pete says calmly. “If we could just have a reasonable conversation-”

Becky throws the hen at him; it flutters into Pete’s face in an explosion of feathers. The moment when he falters is just enough for Jack to get the upper hand, literally; he twists Pete round and trusses the man with his own tie. 

“Not sorry,” Jack informs him cheerfully. “Becky, get the engine running!” 

“On it!”

Pete can’t reply at first; he has a mouthful of grass to cope with. By the time he’s spat it out, Becky’s stuffed everything into the Tri-Pacer, is waiting in the cockpit. Jack applies one last kick in the pants for good measure and jumps in the plane just as it starts moving. 

The Phoenix agent watches their departure with a certain weary disgruntlement. He could call in the heavy guns, have those two chased down and arrested, but it wouldn’t be worth the explanations. This whole affair had been on impulse, anyway. Helen had laughed him to scorn when he’d suggested it. 

“With Murdoc watching over him? The man’s probably knock-kneed and scared for his life. Maybe we’ll get some confirmation that MacGyver’s still alive, but we know that already.”

He’d disagreed. By now, he really ought to know better than to argue with Helen. 

********************

“Are you still in touch with your niece?” Murdoc asks, lazily curious. 

“That’s for me to know and you not to.”

“I’m constantly by your side. We have been on three different continents in as many days. How are you doing it?”

“You’d get bored with me if I didn’t have any secrets,” MacGyver says, finishing his glass. “Pass the champagne?”

“The bottle is easily within your reach, already.”

“I know. But I sure get a kick out of saying it.”

********************

“How do you know Mac’s okay, anyway?” Jack inquires as they fly. 

“Magic. I’d know in here,” Becky says, tapping her heart. “He’s fine.”

“Becky, that’s silly. What is it that’s really telling you?”

“You told me yourself. A conman’s gotta have a couple secrets.”


	10. December 1990

“Any preferences for tea?” Murdoc asks (this time, MacGyer has the book, while he’s frowning at the banality of American cable). His partner’s been usually terse these last few weeks, which always means trouble. 

“Oh, I dunno,” MacGyver says, putting down the copy of _Psychological Warfare._ “I get- well, not exactly tired of room service but there’s a couple of things you just can’t order. I used to do this chicken dish for Becky, roasting drumsticks on a stick suspended over a casserole dish of lentils. So all the fat drips into the soup for flavour, and the chicken gets nice and crispy.”

“How very plebeian.”

“Yeah.”

“I could have the hotel prepare it exactly as you’re describing. Sufficient credit works miracles.”

MacGyver sighs. “That’s not really it. I want to make it for her with my own hands, and eat it with her, and I know I can’t.”

“It’s this wretched holiday season, isn’t it? I should have realised you’d be the sentimental type.”

“One thing I never got wrong,” MacGyver says, perfectly solemn. “She didn’t start really cheering up that first year, until we started prepping for Thanksgiving pie and football. It was such a relief seeing her smiling again and meaning it.”

Murdoc considers the problem. It’s an absurdly dangerous proposition, but then most of their work is. And he is unable to deny MacGyver anything at this point, reasonable or not.

“If the Phoenix Foundation has any sense, they’ll be keeping an eye on her that day for exactly this eventuality. Therefore, we do not go anywhere near your niece at Christmas.”

“That figures.”

“Therefore, we arrange a meeting for an earlier date, and you can enjoy the whole revolting affair in at least some pretense of safety. Are you able to give your niece anything so concrete as a specific time and place?”

“Yup.”

“Then make it Arizona- I’ll give you the address. I have a safehouse there.”

“Why would anyone want a safehouse in Arizona?”

“Close to the border. Within driving distance of Los Angeles. It’s a far more sensible place for one than nowhere, Minnesota was.”

“Anywhere was more sensible than that. I still can’t get over how lucky I was there,” MacGyver says, fondly. “I owe you everything, I know that.”

“You’re welcome,” Murdoc says, waiting for the inevitable fondling. It comes. 

There are times he catches himself thinking that they’re quite distressingly normal, as a couple. Peripatetic, yes, but they know each other’s habits, they kiss and quarrel and make up, they are a self-contained unit. 

He usually kills the next target that much more showily, after thoughts like that. 

***************

“He said for me to come alone,” Becky tells Jack. 

She’s not sure if she regrets telling him now. Jack’s got it firmly lodged in his skull that she can’t go by herself. Or at all.

“I mean, if I go alone, I know I’ll be safe. I’m not sure you would be.”

“But it’s no good without him. Nothing’s any good without him,” Jack insists. “So I have what I wanted, a thriving Texas transport business- and you know what? I’d be happier if I’d stayed in cold wet miserable Minnesota so long as Mac was around. I know that now. I think I probably always knew that, actually.”

“I don’t think he’s ever coming back, though. This is just for one day.”

“It means one more day with Mac. Even if I do have to put up with theatre guy.” 

And Jack’s the one who’s been there for her, this year. To help her move into her dorm, to offer comedically useless advice on term papers and take her out for Chinese food at Thanksgiving. A shoulder to cry on, whenever she’s worrying for her uncle. 

“I guess…but let me go in first, please.”

“No.”

“Please?”

***************

“I was going to catch up with you two sooner or later,” Pete Thornton says. 

Mexican standoff. He holds a gun on Murdoc, Murdoc holds a gun on him. MacGyver is struggling to breathe under the weight of a dozen hefty sandbags, having noticed the triggering tripwire just a second too late- and so much for the safehouse. 

Murdoc nods at it. “Cunning enough. I’ve seen worse.”

“Traps are a lot easier when they don’t have to be fatal,” Pete says. “Although that one probably will be, if we wait long enough- I’m disappointed. I gave you every opportunity to walk away, and you didn’t.”

“I can shoot you now and still do that. You were never that quick with a gun.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference. I’m just the advance guard- the whole alphabet soup of agencies is going to be here shortly.”

“Suppose I turn myself in,” Murdoc asks. “What about MacGyver? Does he go back to Minnesota?”

“What? Of course not, we’re taking him in on charges.”

“My surrender for his freedom. To say nothing of your life.”

“I don’t value my life that much, these days,” Pete says, strained and terribly weary. “Who’s that? Nikki, is that you?”

Coming up from behind, Jack Dalton shoots him in the head. Kicks the bleeding body out of the way, as he goes to rescue MacGyver. 

“Jack!”

It’s only one word. Murdoc wants to ignore it. 

But it isn’t just a word- it’s the transfixed expression on MacGyver’s face, hopeful longing that Murdoc’s never seen from him before, and he can’t lie to himself about what that means. 

All this time, and MacGyver’s never said he was in love. Fascinated by the spy business, hungry for affection, satiated by the thrill-seeking sadism- but only using him. Only ever using him. Jack Dalton is the blind spot he wouldn’t let himself see, because then he’d have known he could never keep the man’s heart. 

And at the end of it all- it is love, pure and simple. 

A heartfelt wish for what’s best for MacGyver, even if that means giving him up. 

“At least I got to see you one more time,” Jack says, holding the spluttering MacGyver with great tenderness. “My Mac…oh, and hello to you too, I guess,” he adds. 

“There’s a trap door in the basement leading to a subterranean river. A boat you can use, getaway funds and so forth,” Murdoc says. “Get him out of here. I’ll convince them he wasn’t involved.”

“Why are you giving him back to me?” Jack asks, harshly. 

“I’m not going,” MacGyver says, coughing. “I owe it to him-“

They want answers, they want speech. Even if he knew the answers, he wouldn’t tell them. 

“If you two don’t leave, I will personally stab you both to death with MacGyver’s SAK. That will hurt. Have I made myself clear?”

“Sheesh!” Jack says, shaking his head. “Clear as day. We’re outta here.”

Murdoc begins collecting weapons for the siege; he’ll surrender, but only after a satisfactory number of casualties. He smiles once, at the sound of distant splashing. 

“You’re dying, by the way,” he adds to Pete Thornton. 

“I noticed,” Pete says, faint humour still colouring his voice. “Counted on love, didn’t see this coming…pity you couldn’t have done it yourself, Murdoc. It’d have been quicker.”

“That can be arranged,” Murdoc says. “And considering the tests they’re going to run, one of my bullets had best be in your corpse, yes.”

“At least I brought you down…”

He very nearly dies before Murdoc has time to shoot him. 

Not quite, though. 

***************

Murdoc’s money is enough for the perfect plane; it isn’t quite enough to buy the perfect house as well. 

“That’s all right,” Becky says, seeing Jack and Mac discussing it with longing. “I’ve got some money from the coffee shop sale.”

MacGyver’s rather startled when she tells him just how much. 

“But this is twice what the shop was worth! Three times, maybe. Even Penny can’t have been that foolish.”

Becky shrugs. “She gave me this card to give you, next time I saw you. Funny, but she wasn’t in any doubt that I would.”

It’s pink, with a cat on it. Typical Penny.

_Dear Mac,_

_I’ve always meant to tell you one of these days but then you weren’t here anymore, but after you left the police were saying all sorts of nasty things about you, which was just not very nice of them. And one of them said you’d taken his gun to go hunting once, because someone had cut all your rabbit snares. And I just wanted to say, I’m so very sorry because it was me who did that, because I felt bad for the rabbits. And I hope this makes up for it. A little._

_And I hope you’ll come and see me, when I’m a famous actress in Hollywood._

_Penny_

“And all this time I was just thinking it was bored kids,” MacGyver says. “Still. Maybe we ought to return some of it-”

“Unc,” Becky says, rolling her eyes. “We more than earned that money. I still can’t eat French toast.”

“Come to think of it, I can’t either.”

“I agree with Becky,” Jack says. “You’re outvoted. House it is!”

He lets them talk him out of his scruples. It really is a very nice house. 

*********************

“You must have me confused with someone else,” Murdoc says, in honest astonishment. 

“After killing my inconvenient predecessor? When I really was starting to despair of promotion- yes, when I say thank you I mean thank you,” Cindy says. “Besides, as director of operations it is my job to stop you slaughtering your way through Phoenix’s entire roster of agents. If the only way to do that is by hiring you, so be it.”

“But working for your do-gooders?”

“You have been in the intelligence business long enough,” Cindy says, unimpressed, “to know that no organisation is entirely clean. Don’t worry, we won’t put you down for the Challenger Club roster. And the benefits are on a par with what you’re used to.”

“Am I allowed to kill Nikki Carpenter, first? Only she irritates me.”

“Actually-” 

Nikki Carpenter comes in, calm and collected. 

“We’re partners. I insisted,” Nikki says, staring him in the face. “Because as soon as you put one foot over the line, one toe, I’ve told Cindy that I will slaughter you like the filth you are. Pete Thornton was a friend of mine. And if I keep your back safe, it’s only because one of these days I will be putting a knife in it myself- and I’ll do it in Pete’s memory. Are we clear?”

He’d quite despaired of finding any further interest in life, with MacGyver gone. 

It’s so kind of the world to offer up a challenge like this. 

************************

A house on the Gulf Coast. With twin horizons stretching out to infinity, land on one side and sea on the other, and no end of space for parking a four-seater plane. A warm soft place, as different from the Minnesota backwoods as is possible to imagine. 

It’s waking up in happiness, every morning, and MacGyver finds he can’t get used to it. 

“You know I don’t deserve this,” he tells Jack one day, as they nestle in bed and watch the reddening sunrise. “When I married Ellen, so I didn’t have to admit to myself I was in love with you- I just hurt everybody. Her and you and me.”

“It wasn’t only your fault,” Jack says quietly. “If I’d had the nerve to tell you myself...but you know who I did admit it to, I told Ellen. I was pretty blunt about it, too.”

“And she married me anyway?”

“She said that all you needed was the love of a good woman, and that if I thought I was going to break up Mission City’s perfect couple, I had another think coming.“

“Guess she wish she’d listened. If we hadn’t married, maybe it’d have turned out better for her...and we wouldn’t have wasted that twenty years.”

“And maybe I’d have killed us both, as a drunk young hotshot pretending to be a pilot. Mac, there’s no good dwelling on the past. What’s done is done.”

“That was one thing I did really like about Murdoc,” MacGyver murmurs. “He always used my full name.” 

“Now that’s gonna be a hard habit to break. MacGyver.” Jack coughs theatrically, on the last syllable. 

“Jack Dalton, you are incorrigible.” 

“But you wouldn’t have me any other way,” Jack says, and kisses him. 

MacGyver knows, damn well, that there is no way he deserves this ending; he’s just been lucky. Forty years worth of it, all arriving at once.

So maybe it has balanced out, in the end.


	11. Epilogue

“So you look at him, and you wonder,” the young woman says, watching the sea. “Because he’s always kindness itself where you’re concerned. But out there- he killed people, and you don’t know how you feel about that, and it still doesn’t make any difference how much you keep loving him. Even though maybe it should. And you’ve always looked up to him so much, as a role model, that you catch yourself wondering- is that in your future? Is that who you’re going to be, one day? Do you want to be?”

“I think,” Becky says, as the tide slowly ebbs. “I think, Ashton, we’re going to have a lot to talk about. But- what if it could be something else? What if you could play it with more kindness?”

Ashton laughs, in her soft English way. “The Great Game, without violence? What would that even be like?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you can’t. But I’m going to try…he told me once, nothing’s ever impossible. I want to keep on believing that.”

To be a different kind of agent. Just as smart, just as capable; but no guns. No deaths. 

Whatever it’d be, Becky Grahme intends to find out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was entirely unexpected. 
> 
> I'm not convinced it's complete, even now- there was a whole subplot about Becky's college life that I didn't tell, and more stories about MacGyver's strange few months with Murdoc, and perhaps I ought to have revisited Mission City one more time. To say nothing of whatever Becky and Ashton are planning. 
> 
> Let's just say I might revisit it, some day...


End file.
